Messages

21

NIWA Discussion / Re: German NIWA

« on: March 03, 2014, 02:53:54 PM »

I don't know the technical details behind the English NIWA layout, but I think that you should use whatever layout/forum you feel suits you best. If you prefer Burning Board over SimpleMachineForums, I think you should go ahead and use that, and not feel that you have to mirror our NIWA, but then again I don't have experience with forum applications, so I'll wait for what others say.

If you do want to mirror English NIWA, I'm sure a person with server access will be able to help you in regards to your first and second questions if you decide to use a similar design.

Good luck on setting up the hub! I was not aware that a German NIWA was forming. I think it would be great linking to you!

(I feel that my post probably didn't answer your questions. Sorry if it didn't.)

22

NintendoWiki discussion / Re: NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

« on: February 17, 2014, 12:42:28 PM »

To follow up on my previous comment... Steel Diver would be a great franchise to test that with, given that it's now taken off due to Sub Wars. If they continue to add ships, maps and missions, I could easily see it eventually being spun off to an independent wiki.

It's funny that you should say that, as I started a Steel Diver Wiki last Friday, the day after Sub Wars came out. It's still in its infancy (as would be expected) and I don't know if I'll keep this one active for too long, though the incompleteness is giving me an incentive to add information about the missions, decals, Steel Divers, etc.

Would you like to help?

23

NIWA Discussion / Re: WiKirby is broked

« on: December 26, 2013, 11:11:53 PM »

Yes, the databases for Wikirby and Lylat Wiki got corrupted, unfortunately. I heard this was because MySQL crashed and corrupted everything. Lylat Wiki is now back up, but Wikirby is still being worked on. Don't worry, I think it will be back up soon.

Hate to tell you this but I think the Wiki will be outdated because the latest backups are from March and August 2013, I'm afraid.

24

NintendoWiki discussion / Re: NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

« on: December 11, 2013, 02:53:28 PM »

I don't think they ever did but Sega Genesis games were released on Wii Virtual Console, so the page could maybe redirect to List of Sega Genesis games on Wii Virtual Console and the games could be listed there, like on this page. The links to those games should be to Wikipedia and should not create red links, in my opinion.

The consoles released by Sega could be mentioned briefly in a history section on an article about Sega itself, mentioning what advantages those consoles had in competition with Nintendo and also the significance of mascots including Alex Kidd and Sonic the Hedgehog.

25

NintendoWiki discussion / Re: NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

« on: December 11, 2013, 02:15:51 PM »

Competing companies get articles? Why would Sony and Microsoft get articles on a Nintendo Wiki?

As an overview article on the company and it's interactions with Nintendo.

A user recently created a page on the Sega Genesis. Should it be kept, deleted, or merged into a Sega page?

Edit: I have mixed thoughts. On one hand, there's not much information on it so some could argue is it really worth keeping but then at least something is better than nothing and it could always be expanded on. I'm OK with it staying unless it is merged into somewhere else. (It could possibly be incorporated into a Sega article and could mention some advantages of it that generation, like how the Sega Genesis had "blast processing", for instance).

Edit 2: There's an older article on the Sega Master System too, but it does mention that games from that system are available on Virtual Console and lists them.

26

NintendoWiki discussion / Re: NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

« on: October 07, 2013, 07:58:18 PM »

I personally feel it would harm N Wiki's alleged independency even more if even major subjects like Super Mario Bros. are covered off-wiki (not to mention the creation of an inconsistency in coverage, the reason for which is in no way apparent when viewing N Wiki as a seperate entity from NIWA) for apparently no other reason than to not "steal" traffic from the member wikis. I think what we should be looking for is something that makes sense for N Wiki as its own entity; the most common criticism of it is that it's nothing but a puppet wiki operated by other NIWA members to promote the network, and deciding to entirely ditch such coverage for other wikis' benefit would only take that further. And, as was brought up on Skype recently, if there is no independency, what's N Wiki even doing in NIWA (an independent wiki alliance) as a proper member?

That said, even thinking of other members' benefit, I believe covering the games in their own articles can actually work better for that than just putting outgoing links into a table, as the articles are more likely to show up in web searches etc. and are already interlinking to other members for more info (they also cover blurbs and have the potential to cover a lot of technical information, which are not covered on the focus wikis). I continue to be perfectly fine with the Kirby articles on N Wiki, for one.

Good points. Thinking about the NIWA Wiki related game pages again, some of them serve as relatively good summaries and like you said, some of them have blurb sections that are useful. I personally feel it would be a shame to get rid of them and people can always click a link on the 'short summary' notice at the top of the article if they want more information on another Wiki. As was suggested on Skype, I think, these pages could focus more on aspects including reception and the development process (it would be fun to go through Iwata Asks for instance and pick out some trivia) too.

The other pages in that category aren't so good and are arguably just 'skeletons'. Maybe those should be converted into inter-wiki redirects until (if) somebody wants to make a fuller article about the game.

There is also the topic of smaller game franchises, which wouldn't merit their own wiki (Ex: Ice Climber). I was told that full coverage of these series was part of the reason behind creating Nintendo wiki. I do not agree with this approach. It creates unnecessary clutter on the wiki and would just make the wiki confusing. I feel they should be covered to the same extent as any other franchise that n-wiki covers.

In terms of extra articles about e.g. characters, modes, etc., like how there is currently a Condor article, I agree those shouldn't be on the Wiki.

I would like to propose the idea of articles on select Nintendo characters. The primary ones that are known world wide as being Nintendo. (Ex: Mario, Pikachu, Samus, Link, a few others)

I also like the idea of having articles on companies who have competed with, or worked with Nintendo. Coverage of these companies wouldn't expand beyond that article however.

I support this. It might get tricky to find out whether certain characters are popular enough. For this we should probably look at the reception those characters have received on the Internet, books, etc. like how Wikipedia only has a select few articles on certain Pokémon species and lists the rest.

What about third-party characters like Sonic and Mega Man. Should those be included?

27

NintendoWiki discussion / Re: NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

« on: October 07, 2013, 10:44:39 AM »

The problem with the "important series" approach would be to come up with an objective system to determine which are important and which aren't. Only the main 3? Series with more than X games sold?

In my opinion coverage should be:
*Full coverage of hardware.
*Full coverage of history and people.
*Articles on all series. 
*Game articles only when there is no member wiki to link to.
*Keep current coverage of NIWA.

I mainly support this. When I think of NintendoWiki, I feel we could make it a unique site about Nintendo's heritage rather than a database of games (NinDB does that better than us).

The only thing I disagree with is the current coverage. I think articles on games that are only licensed by Nintendo like Digmon Racing should be deleted, unless Nintendo did play a role in the development of such a game in someway.

28

The Lounge / Re: The "I'm Going Away Forever"/"Never Mind, I'm Back" Thread

« on: August 29, 2013, 06:29:52 PM »

I suppose I'll be back for a while, I miss this place.

Welcome back!

29

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 21, 2013, 03:16:16 PM »

Maybe you could try the free version of Hex Editor Neo: http://www.hhdsoftware.com/free-hex-editor

It has a bit of a learning curve and might be overkill for text searching, but it can handle the whole SSBM disc at once so filesize shouldn't be a problem.

Good idea. Note that you have to activate a 14-day trial to change the encoding (from View -> Encoding) if it isn't in 'Default ANSI'. It's just a matter of clicking a button from the message that tells you that feature is for the standard edition, though, and once the 14-day trial is up, you can still use the program, just without the features available in the full version.

30

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 18, 2013, 02:41:43 PM »

You definitely got me off to a good start; thanks!

I still have a lot of questions though. Since I wasn't sure exactly how to create a table of characters (I have no idea what "checking each character by index number" meant) I went ahead and tried converting the file to .html and reading it with Chrome. There was a ton of unreadable garbage in there, but plenty of English, too (and French and German. Go figure). Anyway, I'm assuming, since a lot of in-game text showed up in English, that I don't have to create a table file for it. BUT WAIT there's more.

When I change the game file to a .html file, it's still a huge file. So huge, in fact, that Chrome crashes before it can load all the text. I opened the .html file in WindHex and it handled it, but I still couldn't find any of the Scan Data, which I found very odd. I extracted all the root files I could find using Dolphin and started doing the same with those. There was even a Logbook.pak file that contains all the logbook entries. But I still can't find a file that contains all the Scan Data - or one that contains any Scan Data. Very frustrating. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Glad I could help!

I'm not sure what to suggest about the Scan Data as I don't have the ISO and haven't played any Metroid games. It's possible that it could be in another encoding unlike the other readable text (though I don't see why the developers would need to do this), or if the Scan Data contains text that are graphics that could be why you can't find them.

Did the text in WindHex appear the same as it did in the right Chrome encoding? If not, you can try downloading Notepad++ (I believe it won't crash for large files) and go to the 'Encoding' option and choose the right encoding from there, although actually changing the encoding and scrolling down may cause some lag.

If the Scan Data still doesn't appear, it's probably due to one of the two aforementioned reasons. In the case that they are graphics, there is a program called ConsoleTool that may be able to display them.

To elaborate about index numbers, each text character has a special code that defines it. I guess you could compare them to color codes, but pretty much every memory address (e.g. a stackable object on an items screen with 0A meaning you have ten of them) uses index numbers (see the ANSI hex section here for an example). Making a table file is just a list in the format of '(hex Number)=(character)' each line but to find what text characters use what index numbers requires hacking knowledge and it can be difficult to find them, (I can only find them in older games where there's a name entry screen and a cheat searcher, etc.) so I'm not sure what to do if the Scan Data is in a non-standard encoding, though since you found English text in a standard encoding, all of the text that aren't graphics probably are in that encoding as well.

I'm sorry if this isn't much help. I hope you're able to find the Scan Data soon.

31

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 11, 2013, 07:46:25 PM »

Generally, to create a text dump you first need to create a table of characters (e.g. 00 = A 01 = B) that each index number gives (example). This can be achieved by hacking but you need to be able to check each character by index number. I'm not sure how you could do this in some games where the text offsets are not documented (and if they were, it would be just a matter of using a hex editor and checking an offset) but in theory you could use an emulator's cheat searcher and keep doing 'value different' searches when the character on a certain position on the screen changes. Then (in theory) you could find an address that you could keep changing to change the character and document the different index numbers.

Sometimes you may be lucky and the text may be already defined in a standard character encoding such as SHIFT-JIS. If so, just change the file extension to HTML then open it and change your character encoding to that encoding. That would show you all the text in the game that is defined that way with some garbage surrounding it. You can do it in Google Chrome by going to the icon on the top right and going to Tools/Encoding. Try opening the game in different encodings.

When you create a table of characters, you can save it as a table file (.tbl) and load it in a hex editor such as WindHex to see things in the encoding according to the table file. Note that if you want to do it with Japanese Metroid games you may have to go to Option and tick 'View data as Unicode'.

I hope this helps.

32

The Lounge / Re: New Members Thread

« on: August 02, 2013, 08:36:02 PM »

Welcome to the forums, MoriyaShrineConspiracy. 

33

NintendoWiki discussion / Asirra not working properly

« on: July 06, 2013, 06:12:05 PM »

I wanted to make a new page on NintendoWiki that included new external links, so I get the Captcha, but whenever I select all the pictures of cats and submit the page it doesn't work as if I got it wrong. It isn't the wrong interface text either, as selecting all the pictures of dogs causes the same problem. I've got around the problem somewhat by adding <!-- --> to references but that means you can't see them.

I hope someone can fix this.
Thanks.

34

NIWA Discussion / Re: It's official: Square Enix and Nintendo abandoning Dragon Quest in North America

« on: June 14, 2013, 01:08:58 PM »

No Dragon Quest news came out of E3 from either Square Enix or Nintendo.  Underscored by the poor sales of Dragon Quest X on the Wii U, Dragon Quest has officially been abandoned again in North America.  Square Enix simply cannot get their act together and made a horrible decision in making Dragon Quest X an online-only, subscription based game. 

Dragon Quest was dead in North America from 1992-1999.  Looks like we are entering the second "dark age" for the game series which is arguably the best selling series of all time in Japan.

Sad to hear this  , even though I haven't played a single Dragon Quest game.

35

The Legendary Starfy / Nintendo Power references

« on: June 10, 2013, 09:48:49 PM »

Here are references to The Legendary Starfy in Nintendo Power. This includes one scan of a page of an interview with Hitoshi Yamagami I could only find the first/second page of. I don't have scans from Volume 259 though, which apparently shows someone's fan Starfy plush.

I live in the UK, so it's a shame we never got anything like this in ONM.

Volume 242, page 24 - Preview: Link
Volume 244, page 72-73 - Interview with Hitoshi Yamagami (1): Link
Volume 244, page 74 - Interview with Hitoshi Yamagami (2): Link

36

NIWA Discussion / Re: The dead NIWA wikis repair thread

« on: March 18, 2013, 05:44:47 PM »

1. Starfy Wiki is currently "active", although only Torchickens is doing almost all the work:
    http://starfywiki.org/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=30&from=&limit=500
    Where is the other people (even staff) gone?

I believe the other staff are busy with real life matters. The Wiki is kind of filling up, as there hasn't been a new game in the series since 2009 and many aspects of the series (e.g. characters/enemies, recently costumes) are all covered. It would be great if a new game was released this year.

We've actually never really been too active, probably since the Starfy series has a relatively small fanbase. Most of our edits come from staff.

37

The Lounge / Re: New Members Thread

« on: February 18, 2013, 01:33:55 PM »

Hey, hi, hello there?

Umm Cameraslens here, I got an email asking if I would check out the NIWA community etc. So I figured why not? I run Beyond the Camera's Lens, which is a Fatal Frame / Project Zero fansite. Also run the Zero Wiki, (http://www.cameraslens.com/fatalframewiki/) and forums, and helped with the Fatal Frame 4 English Translation Patch.

So, it is very nice to meet all of you!

Welcome to the forums. I hope you enjoy your stay!

38

The Lounge / Re: New Members Thread

« on: January 28, 2013, 09:29:54 PM »

Hiya, I'm Toad85. I'm a member of the Super Mario Wiki and Kirby Wiki, active on the Mario Wiki Boards, and a former writer for the 'Shroom. When I discovered recently that there was a larger NIWA board, I shrugged and said "Why not? I'll join."

Welcome to the forums, Toad85.

39

NIWA Discussion / Re: Members' Status

« on: October 27, 2012, 06:22:35 PM »

Hi dkpat,

I can understand your point re fluctuating input, for my part i have been quite busy at Uni lately. Do like to contribute though, so will do my best to keep up with it, so its enjoyable rather than a chore,

Cheers

40

The Legendary Starfy / The Legendary Starfy test rooms found

« on: March 04, 2012, 06:42:04 PM »

Following some recently found unused maps and other unused content from Super Princess Peach found by "Ragey". (i.e. another game co-developed by Nintendo and TOSE which has a secret "Starfish" enemy which is Starfy wearing sunglasses) I decided to look at The Legendary Starfy's engine to see if its level maps were stored the same. Sure enough, like Super Princess Peach, the next levels have an index number +256 (giving room for up to 256 rooms per valid level if the developers make space for it) and the equivalent level belonging to the next world is +65535.

I've found a number of test rooms, some with relatively small index numbers, belonging to a World 0 (it appears as a space). You can find a gallery of all of them I've found so far here.

World 0 map. It's basically a copy of Gluglug Lagoon but it has levels which can be connected to form a fish:



Some test maps include:

No. 775:

It's looks like a stage used to test Starly's Low Spin and Wall Jump abilities. There are a number of large rooms like these (all with low index numbers), for example one of them has a giant platform with a pool for Starly to Wall Jump to. Another one of these rooms is full of just empty space. There is another which only contains water with a strong current to knock Starfy or Starly back.



No. 22522:

It's a stage with Lobber's Cottage background from Densetsu no Starfy 4! It looks a little glitchy from the ground. There were three Pearls in this screenshot before I collected them.



No. 102779:

Another one of these stages, using a background from Densetsu no Starfy 4's Pulling Ahead Lake. It's a large room with a giant pool of water for Starfy or Starly to swim in. There also seems to be an invisible staircase of some sort which you can walk on.



No. 1024:

It's a copy of the last room in Gluglug Lagoon (1-1) set in 'World 0'. When you approach Moe, an empty speech bubble is shown. Exiting the level brings you to the World 0 map above. This one is in "0-4".



I didn't want to post any more on this thread as it would extend the page. I plan on looking for unused maps in Densetsu no Starfy 4, but there are no save files on the Internet, and I don't know how to upload my own. It is difficult to find the addresses because you can only select stages and worlds freely once you complete the main game at least once.